Christopher van Donkelaar

I am colour incarnate!

Christopher van Donkelaar — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:10:15 +0000

A year after moving into our old gothic revival house, it had become obvious that the minerals in the water were causing trouble with our household appliances. The washing machine seemed the worse off, so we installed a small water filter for it. Last week we cleaned out that filter, and I was left with a bowl of bright red pigment; the evidence of what the filter’s worth. Those who know me will know how exciting such a residue was for me, but it became a point of epiphany for me.

No other tap in our home is filtered; so this same colour has not been held back anywhere else; instead, it has been ingested. By absorbing colourful minerals (like this iron oxide in my water) that colour has become me; part of me, and alive. Some day I plan on giving it back to the earth (I’ve enlisted the help of worms for this …) but at the time of this writing, that bright red has become a living colour in me.

I can see this colour in the old clay bricks of my house, and in thin veins along the river’s bank. I wonder if my muscles and organs are pigmented with this local colour? I wonder if I share a hint of it with the trees around my house that drink the same water? If my sight would let me see it, I wonder if the rocks and plants and every living thing in my little village would be saturated with the same hue …

I am amazed that my attempts at painting floræ with a single local rock have suddenly become a vision of a reality I hadn’t imagined until now!

Local Colour: The River

Christopher van Donkelaar — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 02:10:15 +0000

Over the past year I’ve been working out a concept that I’ve dubbed, “Local Colour”. Every place has a local-colour. This colour is significant within a region and can be best understood as a permeating indigenous material. The specific hue of a local-colour can become synonymous with a historic, cultural or regional identity. However, in our modern epoch, we are less aware of these connections due to the consumeristic tendency to provide a repeatable brand which has made it all but impossible for our daily objects and materials to still connect us with such a local narrative.

Driving home yesterday I saw a wonderful example of Local Colour in the Conestoga River. The night before we had had sheets of rain pound across our landscape and whenever this happens the Conestoga river becomes brightly coloured with local pigment. The Conestoga River joins the Grand River a little east of the village, and although the same rain swept across those banks too, they are quite different (historically producing a white clay brick, for instance, while the Conestoga produces a raw sienna coloured brick). The difference between the two can be clearly seen when they come together. And, in their coming together each locality’s uniqueness becomes beautifully apparent.

Childhood treasure

Christopher van Donkelaar — Sun, 09 May 2010 02:10:53 +0000

Yesterday Michael came up to me with a small piece of bog ore in his hands and happily presented me with a, “pigment rock”. When I asked him to take me to the source, he climbed on top of a pile of clean fill that had been dumped a few days back. Sure enough, there was the Waterloo’s region blueish clay and yellow bog ore mixed up in the dirt. We spent the next hour or two digging through the dirt-pile …

It turns out the my neighbour needed some clean fill, and, through a series of contacts, a construction company that was doing some sidewalk excavations in Elmira dumped off a clean load of dirt. (I even spoke to the foreman to confirm the dig site) Monday morning it was scheduled to be used, but over the weekend it sat, waiting.

This ochre pigment we collected this morning isn’t very different from the colour I collect down on the Conestoga river. But, what really excited me about this find was watching my son know what he saw, treasure it and then work hard to collect something valuable.

Globe Studio Open-house

Christopher van Donkelaar — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:51:45 +0000

At the beginning of this year, I moved my painting studio to Globe Studios in Kitchener. For those interested, Globe is having an open-house Friday April 30th from 6-8pm (reception) & Saturday May 1st from 10-5pm.

There will be many other artists on hand, and I think it is going to be a good time. For my own part, I’ll be opening my studio to show some of the processes I use in creating icons and unveiling two specific icons of St. Barbara (both created from a different rock from Ontario).

If you’ve ever wanted to peek inside the iconographer’s studio, here’s your chance!

Bracing Panels

Christopher van Donkelaar — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:20:06 +0000

When M. came over late last week I told him optimistically, “I hope to have all the woodworking finished by the end of the week!”. It had been a good week up to that point and I was planning on just rolling along …

Here’s what had gone so well up to a point: The basswood panels look great; their joints are strong and, with their final planing complete, almost unnoticeable. And, I had found a nice, clear length of white ash that was perfect for the panel’s braces and once planed, these revealed a nice even grain across the wood. I then figured out the comparative strengths and movement of each wood species and the results predicted a stable board¹. So, with all the wood looking fit, and the rough cutting done, I laid out the panels and prepared to making my finishing cuts.

It was then that I noticed the panels wouldn’t fit into my table saw sled (for the final crosscut) … in a moment I reviewed the process ahead and realized that none of my jigs would work with panels this size!

So, the week ahead looks like it will be filled with creating the necessary sleds and jigs to continue the work on the icon panels.

I owe my brilliant brother for figuring out all the math involved in this and creating a spreadsheet for me to use. I use it for every icon I create.

The Importance of Not-Knowing

Christopher van Donkelaar — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:00:12 +0000

Today I added twitter updates to my website. My main reason for this is an interest I have in seeing what kind of story (or narrative) can come out of such mini-blogging, 160-character, bits of information.

But, this addition has also congealed in my mind some thoughts and questions: If all those tweets are added up, we should end up with a very realistic impression of any individual – something like a camera renders a landscape. For those who believe that facts add up to explain the whole of a person (or a scenic view, for that matter), this seems to be a godsend: Finally, we can understand who a person really, really is!

But, is this impression really so accurate as it relates to a person? Is a narrative equal to an assemblage of facts? Somehow, intuitively, I am suspicious of that being true. So … I wonder if sooner or later we will come to the point where we accept that what we don’t know about a person is as important as what we do? Further, and to be a little more personal, I wonder if what I don’t know about myself can be a valid and good part of my own person?

The centre of my interest here that that personally I’m rarely inspired by facts … it’s what I can’t quite get my mind around, and what I see as unfathomable, that is really wonderful. Maybe that’s why I’m not sure we are called to look quantitatively at one another (as an assemblage of tweets – for instance), but instead ultimately to contemplate what we can never add up: The Divine, and the Spirit of that divinity in each person.

No related posts.

Joining Panels

Christopher van Donkelaar — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:10:05 +0000

Before gluing the panels together, it’s important to lay them out and see how they should be combined. Each length of board is different (which is one of the nice things about working with a natural material like wood); so, deciding which sections of board belong side-by-side works with this strength. Careful placement can allow one board to almost invisibly blend with it’s partners – which I like the aesthetic of – but it’s also important to make sure that each board is put where is will be most stable. Once decided, each board is trimmed to it’s final length (in one case this meant reorienting a length on an angle so that the grain alignment was correct). Afterward, a big triangle is drawn across the combined length so that the combination isn’t lost (you can see my son drawing one above).

The glue I use in my boards is a milk-based glue called Casein. It is an old glue that has a good record of bonding over the centuries – sometimes even outlasting the wood itself!¹ As a glue, it is stronger than the linden wood I’m using for these icon panels and can get damp without weakening (which will be important later). It’s made by separating the curds and whey from skim milk and then mixing the curds with a little lime water. The result is more like a cement then what most people think of as glue today.

Once the glue was smoothly spread on all the panel’s joints, I carefully aligned and clamped the boards together. It’s important that pressure is applied from both top and bottom so the the panel doesn’t begin to cup while the glue dries. To make sure of this, I check with a straight-edge across the panel’s width.

I only had time today to glue up two of the panels, but I’ll probably sneak out to the barn between Pascal celebrations tomorrow and glue up the other two …

“I have seen a medieval panel, made up with this cement, which was so completely eaten away by worms that the cement which originally joined two parts together stood out in a thin ridge half an inch high, with the marks of the grain of the wood visible on both sides of it.” – Thompson, Daniel V. Jr. The practice of Tempera Painting. Yale University Press, 1936, p11.

Dressing the wood

Christopher van Donkelaar — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:10:46 +0000

Last week was taken up helping with the painting of the nave of Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church. This week, although there is still work to be done in the church, I really wanted to get some work done on the icon panels.

Because of the substantial size of these icons I didn’t have enough wood in my studio to begin with, so my first job was to visit a local sawyer who stores much of my rough lumber. As far back as 2005 I’ve managed to collect a bit of lumber year by year as the Mennonites take down trees from their wood lots. I air dry it all in a couple of stages, and, while this means that it takes years to have usable lumber, the wood superior. At this point, I have a small pile which is suitable for my iconographic work. Of course, not every length of wood is suitable. But, working my way through the pile, I was able to find enough suitable wood for four panels (enough to fill the first section of the west wall).

It was surprising to me how much lumber will be needed … the photo beside is showing the wood that will be used to create only the first four panels! Each length is clear and has rift sawn glue faces. Wood that is clear, or free of knots, is important because those old branches (which appear as knots) cause all kinds of problems later on with discolouration and the adhesion of the gesso. Having a rift sawn glue face means that the wood’s grain on a 45° angle at each board’s edge. This is important as it will improve the overall stability of the boards and make sure that the glue joints remain strong over time.

With the boards selected, I brought my lumber to a chair maker I know who often helps me dress my wood. We worked together stripping the rough outer layer of each board and revealing each one’s beautiful nature. I really love this process, and you never really know what you’re going to see. In one board, it was figured in a way I would describe as “bird’s eye” if it was in maple! Each length of wood is different. And, with this dressing finished, the prepared boards are now in my studio and ready to join into panels.

Plan for the West Wall

Christopher van Donkelaar — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:10:37 +0000

In planning the icon’s placement for the west wall of Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church in Kitchener-Waterloo, I’ve tried to come up with something that is visually pleasing with the structure already present within the Nave. Mostly, I’ve built upon the ratios possible within φ (the golden ratio: which is when, “the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one” – Wikipedia ).

One thing I hadn’t realized before I measured was that the two sections of wall between the existing pillars are not of equal width. After trying a couple of different solutions, I think it would be best to place four icons in the longer section, and three in the shorter. This will allow the wall to be balanced throughout, and the icons to be of a good size.

I’m proposing that the final icons should measure 2′ (61.0 cm) x 1¾” (4.4 cm) x 2’8″ (81.3 cm) (L x W x H). This will make them quite large as free-standing panel icons, however many examples of icons this size, and even larger, have existed in churches; especially as processional icons. In fact, I was fortunate enough to see a few such examples at the Onassis Cultural Center in their, “The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete” exhibition during my trip to New York last month.

Given that, according to this plan, the west wall will now require seven icons, we may have to adjust the current time-line of this project. However there are already two factors that will have impact upon that plan: Our late start in the project and the changing of my mind regarding the panels.

Every few years I have a moment of intense frustration regarding the time it takes to write an icon in the traditional manner. But, time and time again this attitude is corrected (in this instance, it was my MFA critique!) and I remember what a privilege it is to create genuine icons. The decision to create the wooden panels will add months to this project; but centuries to the icons.

For now, I will continue to spent 8 hours a week on this project (as originally intended).

I welcome any comments, or thoughts, from the parish.

Transart Winter Residency

Christopher van Donkelaar — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:10:59 +0000

The last week of February I traveled down to New York City to attend the Transart Winter Residency. While an optional part of my graduate studies, it seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up.

The residency took place at the Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn. Sideshow is a cozy gallery, and the perfect size for our group of roughly 40 students. Over three days, each student took their turn presenting their work to date and receiving a critique from both faculty and fellow students. It was a very helpful time for me, and I’d like to take this chance to state what I’ve learned and the effect it will have going forward with my own project.

While I appreciate the comments that everyone made, there were two devastating (and therefore extremely helpful) comments made during my critique. The first was from Nicholas Estevez: When Nicholas stated that, “I don’t feel that they are charged spiritually …”, it was like having the wind knocked out of me; after all, what is the point of an icon if it isn’t spirit-bearing? But, he’s right … the works are more painterly (and good studies) but poor as icons (Mary Ting echoed this in her statement, “Maybe the art thing is infringing on the icon”). In this studio project I’ve approached the icon as artwork, and spent more time in brush-strokes than the spiritual. If my studio project is about creating an icon, than I need to create an icon (not gallery artwork).

The second hard thing to hear was that, even with the two icons of St. Barbara being created using only a single rock from Cobalt and Madoc, the images were still opaque in their story. The journey of their creation (which is central to the Transart project) wasn’t comprehensible. I continue to be frustrated by this because I think it represents a broader cultural blindness to what surrounds us (present both in the art world, and religious communities). This project’s intention wasn’t to set the icon apart, but use it as a vehicle that demonstrates the same reality that exists behind a simple kitchen-chair: Mankind’s ability to create new examples of beauty out of the earth.

With both these ideas in mind (and many other notions, too) I think that perhaps a stronger project can be built around the journals kept in creating an icon (it was Jean Marie Casbarian who first hit upon the idea that a journal might be stronger than a website during the critique). So, instead of creating many examples of icons created from rocks around Ontario, I will focus on creating just one, from my village of Conestoga. And, while the icon will be the ending point, it will be the paper journal that represents the studio project for this semester.

This journal will include the exploration of the story of St. Barbara, my local environment, pigment tests, my daily thoughts and prayers. I’m also committing myself to observe the monastic practices of morning and evening prayers (with the addition of the iconographic dedication prayers for both the objects and myself), fasting and daily meditation during the writing of this icon in an attempt to address Nicholas’ concerns.

There are still a lot of issues that were raised during the winter residency that I’m not decided about. How (or can) religious art can function outside of a religious space? Can aspects of the icon (maybe the halo, or a grain of pigment sand) function as art apart from the icon? For now, I think I’ll let these questions simmer …

Before I close my entry on my trip to New York, I also want to mention that I made a dash to the Onassis Cultural Center and viewed the, “The Origins of El Greco” exhibition which was wrapping up that weekend (a special thanks to Mary for pointing out this opportunity to me!). The icon pictured here was absolutely stunning to witness; and I found myself spending a good deal of time contemplating it. It too was part of my education for the week!